PAX 2010 – Day 2: Hard Rocking Party

So, as I was saying, before I never came back to finish talking about the best Saturday I’ll ever have, at the end of the super-cool meeting, I went back to the Guild Wars 2 demo for another round instead of looking to see what else was around. I’m lazy like that. I decided to make another human ranger and instead of plowing through it all I went exploring around the countryside and discovered a few more events I didn’t see my first play-through. If I had the chance, I wouldn’t leave, but it was crowded, it was always crowded when we were there (except Saturday morning) so I can tell you Guild Wars 2 is something a lot of fans and other folks are looking forward to. Read the rest of this entry »

PAX 2010 – Day 2: A Dynamic Meeting [Updated]

So, remember when I said we would go look at the other exhibits at PAX? Ha ha ha, I was lying apparently. I was lying so hard, I have to make two seperate posts about the awesomeness that went on yesterday, so buckle up, and let me tell you a story about an epic mega shark, and Quaggan bombs.

And maybe Iron Quaggan. Read the rest of this entry »

PAX 2010 – Day 1

Day one of PAX 2010 has come and gone with not a whole lot seen from me, sadly. This is, of course, all to blame Guild Wars two, but I still have one and a half day to enjoy the rest of this fantastic convention. So, day one, what did I get done? Read the rest of this entry »

Guild Wars 2 Combat Articles: Healing and Death

The newest article for Guild Wars 2 brings us news of death penaltys and healing from one of the game’s designers, Jon Peters.

Let’s talk about healing and the traditional MMO trinity of DPS/Healing/Tank. Well, I guess the big thing is that there will not be a dedicated healing class(le gasp!), which will leave the monk profession either gone completely or as a fist-to-face action hero (One can dream). So what does this mean for your party? Well, for one, you don’t sit around with an almost-full party looking for a healer when you could be out bashing faces in. That’s always a plus in my book. Besides, players get their own special healing skill so who needs a silly healer? Read the rest of this entry »

Guild Wars 2 Combat Articles: Traits

This week saw the release of more enticing information for Guild Wars 2 in the form of Ben Miller, a game designer for GW2, talking about traits and their role in the upcoming sequel to ArenaNet’s hit MMO, Guild Wars. “What are traits?” you might ask. Well, according to Ben, “At a basic level, traits make you better at what you choose to do. You slot traits in order to modify skills and attributes. Once you have mastered a handful of traits they become a key component in creating your overall build.”

Now, I hate to compare, but this sounds similar to World of Warcraft’s glyph system, except more elaborate because that’s just what Anet does.

According to Ben, there will be 100 or so traits for each profession to master, which as you may guess, leaves a lot of room open for different trait-builds, and each profession will focus on different activities to learn such traits, so, for example, a warrior would train physically while an elementalist would study ancient arcane tomes. This will help to make each profession feel even more unique, which sounds fantastic to me.

Combine the trait system with the new skill system in Guild Wars 2, and I’m starting to see how players will be rewarded more for experimenting or even running unorthodox builds, which I’m already accustomed to. Ask anyone in my alliance about the guy who runs crazy builds that don’t work half of the time.

You can read the full article on the main Guild Wars 2 website and I suggest you do as I barely cover the article and it’ll help you get more excited for the release of GW2!

P.S. Guild Wars 2 will be at PAX Prime